Amazing news—big congrats!

Good strength to you for the season, @aestallings.bsky.social.

I feel this. The very real problems are massive and many, but even so, the sheer volume of coverage and posts etc etc has a way of making the grounded, embodied, generative even, parts of my life seem smaller they are. Running and cooking have been an amazing help. And always coffee!

The way this piece moves…whew. Glad to have read it. Congrats on the publication!

I was just talking with a friend about the way he’s seen 1st-year art school students change in recent years, where for many hyper visibility online & brand collabs are now their main goal in making art—being “creators” ASAP. Who has time for the slow, generative evolutions of ateliers?

My hope for a work of art to be beautiful doesn’t erase or ignore the suffering it coincides with. Life is beautiful. Life is very hard. I make art, I write poems, as affirmation and critique, as supplication and testament and hope toward a better tomorrow.

It’s strange to write, to make art, to enjoy life—to paint with such bright colors!—when there’s so much to mourn. This painting holds all of it. Maybe every painting does.

The kind of aspirational content I’m here for.